Space!

I write a lot about trying to find a common ground for humanity – in terms of our evolution and progression as a species. If you look back, we slowly inched forward as a civilization and then BAM, in just a few hundred years we got the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, Information Age, etc.

We live in an era where there are a LOT of exciting and revolutionary discoveries being made. Its almost as if we’ve kicked our evolutionary/technological progress into turbo-drive with the pace at which we’re advancing these days.

I think we’re presented with a unique opportunity here. If we, as an entire population, came together and set a goal to assure the continued existence of our species, I bet we could iron out a lot of the cultural differences we’re facing today. Giving ourselves a monumental, vastly significant goal to work towards as a unit would provide the exact thing we need to come together as a species. Shifting our focus to the bigger picture of flipping the bird to extinction would give us something to concentrate on that would require cooperation and coordination rather than conflict and violence. Will this solve terrorism and other problems? Obviously not. There will always be bad people. But giving the world something else to focus on would certainly provide a positive outlet that we so desperately need.

I would liken it to the 1960s. When JFK set a goal to land on the moon within the decade America experienced a sense of cohesion, as they had a single, enormously difficult goal that everyone wanted to achieve. We need to get back to this frame of mind as a society. Our focus needs to be on the progression of humanity rather than the prevention of conflict. We, as a species, are shooting ourselves in the foot and bottle-necking our own cultural evolution by committing all of these heinous acts against ourselves.

So what might this focus be, you may ask? Space. Hear me out. I think we should expand our space programs and look more seriously into terraforming and planetary colonization. Yes, perhaps we still have millions of years of healthy Earth left. But with the way we’ve been treating the environment, coupled with the consistent rise in population – this place ain’t gonna last forever. Eventually we’re going to reach a point where we need to consider our options, and I think it would behoove us to address these things sooner rather than later.

In any case, I wish we could come up with some sort of big-time goal that would require huge amounts of resources, attention, and cooperation. I just think that it would help get the American Spirit back up and running.

I’ll conclude with this: a cool documentary of what we would do if we had to evacuate Earth.